Fred
Retired Staff
Re: Mission 5: Amaya's Gate
The aether-formed blade struck into Mani's Black Mindy from the left shoulder to the crotch: a killing blow that would've cut through zesuaium and incinerated the person inside... had they not been in the Blue Rift expanse. As it was, the attack left only a nasty scar across the armor.
Kotori was crouched, having landed hard after the attack she had considered a deathblow, and realized - too late! - that it had been exactly what her enemy had lured her to do when both of Mani's own aether swords swept in to make a killing crosscut.
Gasping, the NH-23 nekovalkyrja shirked away and flattened herself at the very last moment, dipping just under the bottom of the X-cut, but even the near-misses of her enemy's projected aetheric swords proved very harmful: this close, the furnace-like heat of the weapon caused what was left of her clothing, her hair and her skin to catch on fire.
She would have had shrieked in pain if the air hadn't been so stifflingly hot - her lungs just couldn't drag any of it in. Nervous receptors vied for her attention to catalog the parts of her body that hurt, but at this point, there was just no way to compare where it was more painful.
Choking on the smell of her own burning flesh, Kotori lit her aether sword and still fought on, somehow. Her unfeeling hands swept the weapon across Mani's left leg, destroying the empty offensive missile pod there and burning across the left thigh before finally brushing against the right knee and destroying the zesuaium blade there.
Mani's swords were wide to the side because of the cross-cut, but the Black Mindy's counter-attack was swift as the power armor bent down and tackled into Kotori, driving the spikes of its right pauldron into the NH-23's torso. The spikes punctured deeply through carbonized skin and the bones beneath before the impact of the charge tore Kotori away to have her flung to the ground like a rag doll.
* * *
Miyoko's attempts to hack into the Black Mindy were so far unsuccessful. As she had feared, the power armor ran on a closed network, with the pilot likely relying on long-range telepathy to communicate with her allies.
Yukari's efforts to make a connection with the NH-23 proved more successful, though. The NH-23's mind touched hers, spoke to her, exchanged information with her at dizzyingly fast speed even by the standards of nekovalkyrja telepathy not to mention it was something of a chaotic jumble... as if the NH-23 was trying to say everything that was on her mind in an instant.
"I am sorry, Yukari, for how I have treated you. Amaya was an empath capable of feeling deceptions; after having goaded her into kidnapping me, I had to make sure she would not sense anything but certainty in her own superiority. I kept you in the dark so you could shield us with your ignorance of the ruse I concocted, a ruse I left hints for Nyton and Tom, but not you. Amaya has manipulated me for four years: I needed to tear her down from her pedestal."
"I apologize most especially for underestimating you. I knew you were more prone to wearing your heart on your sleeve and I expected - despite my 'ask for no quarter' stance - that you would care enough for Tom and the life you could have potentially lived with him to surrender - we knew from Amaya's file that if she felt she could afford it, she would grant mercy. All I needed while on Amaya's bridge was for her to open her administrative interface where she had all but automated her squadron and I could seize control of everything she had!"
"That is not what you did. In the face of despair, you were honorable. Inconveniently so. I tried to break your resolve and you still remained firm. The farther away I get from being what I would prefer to aspire to in order to win, the closer you seem to embody the dignity I wished our people would better represent."
"I am afraid, Yukari. I am hurt, just like back when I was dying in the PNUgen complex. It is my nightmare, all over again... but there is no waking up from it this time around."
"Life seems to me like candleflame is to a moth; the more I strive for it, the more it burns me away. I am dying, no matter how hard I try to live. I have been dying for the past four years, stuck in a macabre half-life, a spectator to a life I might have had lived. My mother ran away, all but abandoning me and until today, I have been a liability to the people whom might remotely care for my survival, if only out of principle."
"No matter how a NH-23 is touted to be, I am scared of dying. I have never died before. I do not want to die. I want to live! I wanted to have family and children! Why does our existence make it so hard to earn the simplest of things many take for granted to create life and struggle for a measure of happiness? Why? Why?! WHY?!"
"Praise me, Yukari! Tell me I have been brave, that I have been patient, that I have done well. I have sacrificed so much more than Ketsurui Chiharu ever had and shown even more strength, but no one will raise any temples for me; people will pray to Chiharu for salvation, but no one will pray to me for victory. I will be forgotten."
"All I have left... is you."
The aether-formed blade struck into Mani's Black Mindy from the left shoulder to the crotch: a killing blow that would've cut through zesuaium and incinerated the person inside... had they not been in the Blue Rift expanse. As it was, the attack left only a nasty scar across the armor.
Kotori was crouched, having landed hard after the attack she had considered a deathblow, and realized - too late! - that it had been exactly what her enemy had lured her to do when both of Mani's own aether swords swept in to make a killing crosscut.
Gasping, the NH-23 nekovalkyrja shirked away and flattened herself at the very last moment, dipping just under the bottom of the X-cut, but even the near-misses of her enemy's projected aetheric swords proved very harmful: this close, the furnace-like heat of the weapon caused what was left of her clothing, her hair and her skin to catch on fire.
She would have had shrieked in pain if the air hadn't been so stifflingly hot - her lungs just couldn't drag any of it in. Nervous receptors vied for her attention to catalog the parts of her body that hurt, but at this point, there was just no way to compare where it was more painful.
Choking on the smell of her own burning flesh, Kotori lit her aether sword and still fought on, somehow. Her unfeeling hands swept the weapon across Mani's left leg, destroying the empty offensive missile pod there and burning across the left thigh before finally brushing against the right knee and destroying the zesuaium blade there.
Mani's swords were wide to the side because of the cross-cut, but the Black Mindy's counter-attack was swift as the power armor bent down and tackled into Kotori, driving the spikes of its right pauldron into the NH-23's torso. The spikes punctured deeply through carbonized skin and the bones beneath before the impact of the charge tore Kotori away to have her flung to the ground like a rag doll.
* * *
Miyoko's attempts to hack into the Black Mindy were so far unsuccessful. As she had feared, the power armor ran on a closed network, with the pilot likely relying on long-range telepathy to communicate with her allies.
Yukari's efforts to make a connection with the NH-23 proved more successful, though. The NH-23's mind touched hers, spoke to her, exchanged information with her at dizzyingly fast speed even by the standards of nekovalkyrja telepathy not to mention it was something of a chaotic jumble... as if the NH-23 was trying to say everything that was on her mind in an instant.
"I am sorry, Yukari, for how I have treated you. Amaya was an empath capable of feeling deceptions; after having goaded her into kidnapping me, I had to make sure she would not sense anything but certainty in her own superiority. I kept you in the dark so you could shield us with your ignorance of the ruse I concocted, a ruse I left hints for Nyton and Tom, but not you. Amaya has manipulated me for four years: I needed to tear her down from her pedestal."
"I apologize most especially for underestimating you. I knew you were more prone to wearing your heart on your sleeve and I expected - despite my 'ask for no quarter' stance - that you would care enough for Tom and the life you could have potentially lived with him to surrender - we knew from Amaya's file that if she felt she could afford it, she would grant mercy. All I needed while on Amaya's bridge was for her to open her administrative interface where she had all but automated her squadron and I could seize control of everything she had!"
"That is not what you did. In the face of despair, you were honorable. Inconveniently so. I tried to break your resolve and you still remained firm. The farther away I get from being what I would prefer to aspire to in order to win, the closer you seem to embody the dignity I wished our people would better represent."
"I am afraid, Yukari. I am hurt, just like back when I was dying in the PNUgen complex. It is my nightmare, all over again... but there is no waking up from it this time around."
"Life seems to me like candleflame is to a moth; the more I strive for it, the more it burns me away. I am dying, no matter how hard I try to live. I have been dying for the past four years, stuck in a macabre half-life, a spectator to a life I might have had lived. My mother ran away, all but abandoning me and until today, I have been a liability to the people whom might remotely care for my survival, if only out of principle."
"No matter how a NH-23 is touted to be, I am scared of dying. I have never died before. I do not want to die. I want to live! I wanted to have family and children! Why does our existence make it so hard to earn the simplest of things many take for granted to create life and struggle for a measure of happiness? Why? Why?! WHY?!"
"Praise me, Yukari! Tell me I have been brave, that I have been patient, that I have done well. I have sacrificed so much more than Ketsurui Chiharu ever had and shown even more strength, but no one will raise any temples for me; people will pray to Chiharu for salvation, but no one will pray to me for victory. I will be forgotten."
"All I have left... is you."